Ask Paul: December 3 (Premium)

Given the news this past week, I’m not surprised to see where your heads are at. So here are some great questions to kick off the weekend.

Wirecutter alternatives

zahrobsky asks:

You have recommended wirecutter.com previously. Now that it has gone behind a paywall, do you have any other recommendations for unbiased product reviews that are free?

No, I’m not aware of any publications that are as authoritative or trustworthy as The Wirecutter. The exception being Consumer Reports, which is of course also a paid publication. I do pay for The Wirecutter now, but I’m not happy about that for a different reason than you: I already subscribe to The New York Times, at great cost, and since they own The Wirecutter now, I’m confused why that isn’t just part of my subscription. But whatever. It’s worth paying for.

Pixel 5a vs. Pixel 6

ggolcher asks:

My wife and I have had Pixel 3 phones and it’s time to change them. Having reviewed the Pixel 6 Pro, and with your experience with Pixels in general, which one would you recommend between Pixel 5a and regular Pixel 6?

This is a tough choice. The Pixel 5a has a better overall camera system than the Pixel 3, mostly because of the addition of a second (ultra-wide) lens (the main lens is the same). On the other hand, the Pixel 3XL (not sure if you have one of those) has a better front-facing camera because it has two lenses, one wide, whereas the Pixel 5a has just the one. From a processing perspective, I suspect it would be a close match: the Pixel 3/3XL has a Snapdragon 845 processor, which was decent a few years ago, while the Pixel 5a has a Snapdragon 765G, which is middle of the road today. I’m not a benchmark fan, of course, but looking at Geekbench scores might be instructive: The Pixel 3 scores 495/1685 (single/multicore), whereas the Pixel 5a scores 556/1487. So that sort of bears out my anecdotal guess about the relative performance: the 5a isn’t much of an upgrade from a performance perspective (and it may be worse; I think the Pixel 3 had that Pixel Visual Core chipset that aided photography tasks). The Pixel 5a supports 5G, if that matters to you.

The Pixel 6, meanwhile, is a thoroughly modern device with a great processor (944/2739 on Geekbench since we’re dabbling in that now), an improved rear camera with two lenses, one of which, the main lens, is a significant upgrade, a more modern design, a bigger, high-resolution display, and so on. There are questions, of course, around reliability. (And I’m not sure if this colors your choice at all, but literally just today my Pixel 6 Pro froze and would not display a thing. I had to frig with it for 30 minutes before I got it to reboot and work.)

Pricing is interesting and should help decide this. The Pixel 5a is $449—it was $399 during the Black Friday sale, ah well—while the Pixel 6 starts at $599. So a $150 difference. And I think that kind of seals it, given that you’re both still using a Pixel 3. You should get the Pixel 6. It will be more future-proof and more likely to still work well in three years. The Pixel 5a is on the edge, performance-wise, right now and it’s not going to get better over time. That’s what I would do, anyway. (Plus, you will get $56 or more on trade for each Pixel 3 if you buy direct from Google.)

Mission unaccomplished

will asks:

Microsoft and the mission unaccomplished. You might have wrote about this in the past, but I have a frustration with how we look and view software, especially from large organizations such as Microsoft, and how it is never finished and in fact is a regression in some ways over time. Case in point is Windows 11 vs Windows 10. I would guess that you could find a long list of items Microsoft has sort of started around Windows 10 but never finished them … The same can be said for MS Office and all of the minor changes but so much stuff if left unfinished. I use a Mac and the new Outlook for Mac still does not have Tasks or Notes after its early release over 2 years ago! Now, there was talk earlier this year about another new version of Outlook to be “One Outlook”. Teams is the same way with this new consumer v2 version in Windows 11 that is missing features, while the v1 version still has issues and is a mess of a program.

I know this is not just a Microsoft problem, but since we have gone to a subscription model on software now we just pay for basically a never ending, or finished, program with the promise of future improvements…until the next major release. Overall this is just frustrating and sorry if this is more of a rant, but for a company to have billions in profits and not be able to get a dark mode right in Windows 10 or 11, or Outlook for Mac done after 2 years, it is just sad.

A couple of things.

Kudos on the term “mission unaccomplished,” that’s classic and I wish I had thought of that.

And maybe more importantly, yes, of course, I completely agree. The fear with Windows 11 is that it will succumb to the same thing that Windows 10 succumbed to, which is a lot of talk, broken promises, started but never completed initiatives, and so on. And because it started so badly, released after just three months of public testing with zero user feedback taken into account, there is every reason to believe that Windows 11 is just more of the same. It’s a real problem.

I feel like this notion of shipping software before it’s ready or fully debugged started with Netscape, and then escalated with Google, but seeing Microsoft apply this methodology to something as big and complex—and important—as Windows is disheartening. I just don’t feel that there is anyone, or any team, at Microsoft that cares enough and is detail-oriented enough to pull this off. And that these issues will simply continue. It’s not great.

Web browsers and trust

hrlngrv asks:

I mean this as a serious question: can we mere users really trust any web browser which isn’t developed by a non-profit? Maybe a company whose main product is their web browser (e.g., Vivaldi and Brave)?

This is a fair/excellent question/point. And I feel like it’s somewhat tied to that conversation around other types of services, like music services or storage services where you can go with some Big Tech conglomerate or you could go with a company that only does that one thing. Which do you trust more to do right by you for that one thing? The company that only does that or the Big Tech firm for which that one thing is a tiny thing?

I don’t think it’s clearly settled either way, honestly, but it’s a good debate. And with regards to browsers, there are of course levels of trust. Before the events of the past month or so I think I would have made a compelling case that Microsoft is more trustworthy than Google, for sure, and possibly Apple (not that Apple makes a browser for Windows or Android). But now… I don’t know. Clearly, Microsoft is allowing its own revenue and growth needs get in front of the needs of its users, as I suppose a big company would. And it sort of makes my previous argument look a bit naïve. Maybe more than a bit.

I do think one could use any of the major browsers with open eyes and take the appropriate steps to mostly protect themselves, adding an anti-tracking extension, for example. But your point is made: an independent browser like Brave, Firefox, Opera, or Vivaldi is perhaps the better choice.

Can you think of anything which would get MSFT’s attention better than a boycott of Edge and Bing? From a different perspective, could anything work better than competition in forcing MSFT to behave better? If not, doesn’t using competition as a corrective mean using pretty much any alternative to Edge?

I have to assume there is some math occurring within Microsoft that involves the revenue-generating bets their taking in Edge and Windows 11 and calculating when/if the downsides of those initiatives—users literally leaving the platform—outweigh the upsides (which are mostly theoretical at this point anyway, or what one might call “investments”). This is like insurance, when you think about it. When did car companies finally add safety measures like airbags? When the cost of the lawsuits from the relatives of dead customers outweighed the costs of implementing them.

So all we can do is complain and stop using Edge if this bothers us. You can rest easy knowing that every time someone fires up Edge for the one and only time and uses it to download Chrome or some other browser, Microsoft knows about it. And I will continue to do what I do: petition on behalf of the people who use their products. It’s all we can do, really.

Just how good & sweet & pure is MSFT when it seems it wants, more than anything, to out-Google Google?

Not at all sweet or pure. And, sadly, that’s the real lesson here. No matter how good the PR is, or how much Wall Street loves Satya Nadella’s Microsoft, it’s still one of, if not the, biggest companies on earth. And it certainly acts like that. Which sucks.

When will then be now?

justme asks:

Things in Windows 11 that cause user angst such as right-clicking the taskbar, the difficulty of setting your preferred default browser, Microsoft actively working to prevent any workarounds that allow your choice to function, programs not working (eg Winrar and CCleaner), the MSA requirement for Windows Home, and Edgegate have all been documented. The tech-savvy have voiced their concern. With Edgegate making the BBC and other mainstream outlets, even the non-tech-savvy are getting a taste of what Microsoft is doing. At what point do you believe these design decisions by MIcrosoft will cause lasting damage to the acceptance of Windows 11 by non-technical users?

The mainstream news coverage really helps. When someone like me bleats about some minor annoyance in Windows 11, it’s not exactly news or interesting to most people. But getting attention for these problems is huge. And that’s the type of thing that would make Microsoft change its ways for sure: its public perception is tied to all kinds of things related to its success, including its stock price and its standing with analysts. Regulatory attention is huge, as well, in part because it will also drive news and in part because it could result in real change regardless of the level of attention it gets with the public.

But Windows is also a special case because at least two-thirds of its users are business customers. And enterprises, in particular, have the ability to trigger real change in Windows simply by pushing back against Microsoft’s most terrible decisions. If businesses drop Windows, or even make noise about doing so, Microsoft would drop everything it’s doing to appease them. If they walk away, Windows is over.

Videogames

justme asks:

A gaming question: you’ve mentioned across various podcasts you do that you are in search of something other than Call of Duty to scratch your gaming itch. Would you ever consider something like Hitman (I’m thinking the current World of Assassination trilogy) – or are you firmly anchored in a multi-player world?

On one level, I very much do prefer online multiplayer first-person shooters, as there’s just something visceral and fun about competing with others in real-time. But I’m open to other things, of course. I’ve played a lot of the recent Doom game’s single-player campaign, and I’ll play Halo Infinite like that as well. Games like Forza Horizon can be played that way as well.

The problem, in part, is how this evolved for me, because I don’t usually sit down and just play games for two hours (or whatever) without distraction. I usually just go in and out of these multiplayer matches, and sometimes it’s just 10 minutes at a time, where I’m writing otherwise. I would have to devote time and energy to playing other types of games, and I’m not really sure I can. But .. yeah. Theoretically. I’m always looking, for sure.

Outlook.com and Project Mocca

sherlockholmes asks:

just noticed in my outlook.com that “Project Mocca” is gone. And outlook.com has a new interface. Any news about that?

Project Mocca has become a feature called Board in the Calendar view. You can find it here.

Not sure about the changes to Outlook.com. It looks a little different to me—there are Office web application links in the navigation bar, for example—but I’ve not heard about an update.

Facebook Workspace

helix2301 asks:

What is your feelings on Facebook Workspace? Over the pandemic we heard of Discord, Teams and Gsuite seeing big surges in user growth yet we never hear anything about Facebooks commerical product. I see its still there but my question is FB never talks about it anymore is it dead product? Did they see any growth over pandemic? Does anyone use it? I am in corporate world and I know none of our customers use it.

I view Facebook Workspace–now Meta Workspace, ugh—the same way I view Amazon’s office productivity offerings, as something they feel like they have to do but not something that many businesses will care about at all. Who on earth would trust Meta/Facebook with their work data?

I’m not sure about growth, but Workspace was in the news last month for announcing integration with Microsoft Teams.

Rafael

wright_is asks:

I was just reading your story on the the Edge Cliff and Microsoft taking a step back from the abyss…

In it you mentioned you talked to Rafael. He used to be mentioned much more often and he collaborated with you on a few projects, but in the last few years, he hardly ever gets a mention. Do you still work together on stuff? Are you more just casual friends these days?

No, we’re still friends and collaborators on the books, and we speak regularly. And he’ll be coming on the TWiT Alaskan cruise next July as well, which is awesome.

Living on the Edge

vernonlvincent asks:

I was wondering: How many, and to what extent, of Microsoft’s current decisions with Edge may have to do with the fact that they don’t have a viable mobile ecosystem like Apple or Google? Looking at the recent trends with Edge (the shopping features, BNPL, etc) – those are features that you tend to see on mobile devices. And they make sense there – where you can quickly pull out your phone and price shop/compare online. But even Microsoft’s current offerings, as represented by the Surface Duo, don’t have a lot of traction (whether due to cost, features, quality, etc).

I mean, I think it’s fair to say that Microsoft will put the most attention on where it’s successful, and when it comes to personal computing, that’s on the desktop and not mobile. So in that sense, yes, it makes sense for it to improve—or at least add features—to Edge on Windows/desktop before doing so on mobile. That’s where the users are, and where these things can have the most impact.

In the present Christmas season, I’ve found the shopping features in Edge to be somewhat helpful and informative, but I also see how in a typical day-to-day scenario – all they do is bloat the browser and add unnecessary distractions. But for a company with no mobile offering to speak of – do these features represent some kind attempt to have the same kinds of benefits that Apple or Google have for their users?

I think that’s fair. There’s little doubt that Apple’s success in devices and Google’s success in the cloud are vexing to Microsoft, and that it’s trying to do as much as it can to bridge the gaps in both cases. But Surface Duo isn’t going to make any dent at all in Apple’s devices empire, obviously. And while Microsoft’s cloud solutions are doing well overall, they have little pull with consumers.

The issue I have with the shopping tools in Edge, and with Buy Now Pay Later, is that they should be extensions, not integrated parts of the browser that just add bloat and potential security risks. Implemented as extensions, these services would be optional—and could certainly be advertising during a first-run experience—and, more importantly, they would work with other browsers, and so could still benefit Microsoft if the user chooses Chrome or some other browser. I just don’t see the logic in burdening an otherwise excellent web browser with superfluous features like this, even when some people will obviously find them useful. (And, for whatever it’s worth, there are plenty of third-party shopping and BNPL extensions out there already, so it’s unclear why this kind of thing even has to be added to Edge in the first place.)